Summer Song Vol. 3 // "Goodbye Yesterday"

Oh, that's such a teaser.

We're going to do that song as we close after the message today.

And I'm like, man, this is like all my jams we're singing today.

So I'm really pumped.

And uh, and also kind of going back to what Missy shared with you earlier.

Uh, man, it's been a little bit of a heavy week.

And in my mind, I'm like, I've been looking forward to us singing uh this fast upbeat worship song goodbye yesterday at the end of the service.

And even yesterday, I'm like, ah, I found out about the flooding in Kentucky really close to where my mom and my sister and brother-in-law live, like really, really close, just complete devastation, and a whole church lifted up, put in a creek, and it's like, ah, gives us flashbacks from when other parts of southeastern Kentucky were flooded uh in a tragic way back in 2022.

Uh, and so so much is happening in our midst, and yet we can still praise God with all joy, we can still rejoice in this day that he has given us.

Um, I noticed the lyric we sang just a little bit ago, shine through the shadows, uh, speaking the name of Jesus, that he might shine through the shadows, that even today in Venezuela, even today in the places where churches are gathering a little bit differently because basements were flooded or houses were destroyed, and then you can still lift up praise to God.

I know this is gonna sound like such a weird analogy, but I literally was thinking of the Grinch you stole Christmas a little bit ago.

Like it doesn't matter.

Like I remember the scene where the Grinch had taken all the gifts and was watching from the mountain, like, oh, there's gonna be weeping, there's gonna be sadness when all the who's and who veil come out, and turns out they came out and they joined hands and did their wahoo, oh, whatever they sing.

They still sing it anyway.

And it reminds me of what we can do when we gather together on Sundays.

It doesn't matter what sadness we may carry in here with us, it doesn't matter what worry or fear we may carry in here with us, we can still praise God.

We have been given this day.

This day is a gift from him, and we can rejoice in it, we can be glad in it, we can still lift up his name, and he is enough.

No matter what may seem to be going down in our lives, having him is always, always enough.

Goodbye yesterday.

Now, maybe you've not sung that.

It's been a while since we've sung it here, uh, but it's one of my favorites, and it's uh it was uh released in 2024, Elevation Worship.

They have that kind of a another offshoot of them called Elevation Rhythm that that goes and leads this in worship.

And you got to hear from Nate Diaz, who is one of the band members of Elevation Rhythm.

And you might have picked up on this, but uh, pastor of Elevation Church, Pastor Steven Furtick, is very involved in Elevation Worship.

He himself is a really good musician, and he has been a very uh uh integral part of lyric writing in many of their songs.

And what he was describing was apparently, I'm gonna have to do some digging.

Apparently, Goodbye Yesterday sounded a lot, nothing like it does when we sing it here in a little while.

It was apparently maybe slower, not much of a jam.

Um, but they were workshopping the song, and at one point Nate was talking about they began to sing a hymn, I've decided to follow Jesus.

Now, if you aren't real familiar with that hymn, you may not even know that that is in Goodbye Yesterday, but we'll sing part of that hymn when we sing Goodbye Yesterday in our closing song.

We're kind of getting a two-for-one today.

We've been looking at kind of the backstory behind songs that we sing in worship.

Um, you've seen a little bit of the backstory of Goodbye Yesterday, how it became what it is now, just by watching that video.

But I've decided to follow Jesus is in many, many hymn books, and it's an old song that goes all the way back to something that happened back during the Welsh Revival in the 1880s in India.

So there was a Welsh missionary in the north in a northeastern village in India as doing mission work as a part of this revival that was going on.

So there was a family, there was a person, one man that actually finally committed to Jesus Christ.

And this Welsh missionary had been working so hard doing missions there.

It'd been very frustrating, not seeing a lot of fruit, but this one man converted and turned his life over to Jesus.

But the chief of that village wanted to make an example of this man and brought him and his family before the village and demanded him to denounce the name of Jesus, renounce that he was converting to this new religion that was being talked about.

And when he refused to renounce the name of Jesus, they actually killed his kids in front of him and his wife.

And the story goes that before that happened, when the chief of that village had asked him to renounce the name of Jesus, that man had said, I have decided to follow Jesus and I will not turn back.

And then once the children had been killed in front of him and his wife, the chief demanded once again that he would renounce his faith in Jesus.

And the story goes that this man who had recently converted to Christianity said, Though no one else will go with me, I will still follow Jesus.

And then that chief had his wife executed in front of him.

And he was demanded once again by the chief to denounce the name of Jesus.

And when he refused to do it before his life was taken, he said, I see the cross before me, and this world is behind me.

And this missionary who had witnessed this remembered those words and relayed it to an evangelist in India.

That evangelist's name is Sadhu Sandar Singh.

And he took those words quoted by this man who literally his whole family had been killed for the faith in Jesus, these became lyrics to a hymn that we sing today.

American hymn editor William Jensen Reynolds wrote the tune to Sadhu's lyrics in 1959.

So even though these words to I've decided to follow Jesus originated back in the 1880s, it wasn't put to a tune till 1959.

And like many of our other hymns, it really didn't become popular until it was used in Billy Graham Crusades and became a staple there.

Here's what blows my mind about how God brings us together with music and allows us to be united in song to Him.

The resolve of a newly converted man in India in the 1880s who refused to renounce the name of Jesus continues to be a force in our worship today.

That's what blows my mind.

This man had no idea that what he was saying before his family's life was taken would be lyrics we would sing in 2026 in Independence, Kentucky, originating all the way in a northeastern village in India.

Those lyrics were put to a melody in 1959 and then added to the bridge of an awesome modern worship song in 2024.

But all of this, the backstory of that, begs to question this.

Are we willing to leave everything behind to follow Jesus?

To me, that's the inspirational, the aspirational, even the challenging and convicting question.

I've read more lately about the cost of discipleship, which is a common theme in the Gospels.

And I think it's the thing that you get so excited about this free, amazing gift of salvation that's made possible due to the uh unending mercy and grace of Jesus.

But there is a cost to it.

And I think that's sometimes easy to forget if we're not careful.

There is a cost to it.

Are we willing to leave behind everything?

Our past way of thinking, our past way of living.

And maybe for some, that's a real no-brainer question.

Like, oh, that's an easy answer.

Yes, because what you're really desiring to leave behind is slavery to addiction, a prison of worry or anxiety or depression.

Like, yeah, I'll leave that behind.

Please, by the power of God, let me leave that behind to follow Jesus.

Success on the outside, but emptiness on the inside.

Yes, I would love to leave that behind to follow Jesus.

This song conjures up for me the words of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Philippian church.

Before Jesus, he was a very successful and popular Jewish leader.

He was the man who is crushing, taking down this new movement that was known as the way.

And the people that belonged to the way insisted that Jesus of Nazareth was the prophesied Messiah, was God Himself.

That he actually was no longer dead after all, but had risen from his grave.

And folks like Paul were heroes of Judaism that were putting a stop to that movement.

But as it turns out, the one who was trying to stop the way became a force moving forward the way itself.

I want to read to you a little bit of Paul's testimony that he gives in Philippians 3 in this letter to a church.

Starting in verse 5, he says, I was circumcised when I was eight days old.

And just that one sentence alone, if you have no idea about Judaism, you're like, what?

But that was a strict rule of Judaism.

And this even happened to Jesus Christ Himself in the birth story.

You'll see it.

That on that eighth day, to be taken to the temple, to be taken and to be circumcised, dedicated as a Jewish boy from the start.

I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a real Hebrew if there ever was one.

I was a member of the Pharisees who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law.

I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church.

And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.

I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.

Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

For his sake, I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him.

I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law.

Rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ.

For God's way of making us right with himself depends on faith.

Now, this was a huge transformation that Paul underwent.

Huge.

He had a great reputation, he had power, he had notoriety, he had success, he had the majority of the people residing in the region of Judea on his side.

He even probably had Rome on his side because they were very glad to see this new movement, this new religion be squashed.

And Paul had the upper hand.

He had all of that.

He was the defender of Judaism, he was the enforcer, punishing those who carried this blasphemous movement where they would say that this man who had died on the cross would be God Himself.

That was where Paul was.

He had literally nothing to gain to stop doing what he was doing.

He was the man.

But if you go back and read the book of Acts, chapter 9, Paul had an encounter.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

Literally on his way to a place called Damascus with letters of authority to continue to rest more people who said they were part of the way, more people who carry the name of Jesus.

He just had this encounter.

He encountered Jesus.

And ultimately he was prayed for, and the scales fell off of his eyes, and he was absolutely never the same.

He could see the grave that he'd actually been living in.

He could see for the first time the grave that he'd actually been living in.

Here was his grave.

Paul's grave was self-sufficiency, religion, perfection, and achievement.

But then he met Christ.

And he began to live a resurrected life.

Paul's resurrection was Jesus Christ's righteousness being graciously given to him through faith.

And I'm literally taking that from what we just read in Philippians.

And I don't go around thinking that.

Maybe you don't either.

I don't go around thinking how cool it is that I've been given the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

I don't know why that doesn't always hit me.

I don't always have that come to my mind.

But when I think about when I breathe my last on this earth, and I get to stand one day before God the Father, then this is the gospel truth that matters.

I remember being taught years ago in an evangelism class.

I not long after putting my faith in Christ, I was like, man, I just I want to learn more about God.

I want to learn more about Scripture.

I heard I'm supposed to share my faith.

And my church down in Harlan County was offering a class on how to share your faith.

So I went to the class and they encouraged us to ask a question.

And that question is to ask people, and it's a bold question.

People probably don't like being asked this actually, but it's a bold question.

Like if you were to die today and you were to stand before God and he were to ask you, why should I let you into my heaven?

How would you answer that?

And usually it's very telling.

And I remember being trained about this.

I remember when we actually had conversations with people using this question.

One of the most common answers are things like, Well, you know, I kind of did the best I could.

Tried to do more good than bad.

Definitely a lot more people did bad than I did.

Went to church.

You know, just start naming those kinds of things.

It's so easy to go there.

Uh, in class, that was called a works answer.

Like saying what I've done, what I'm trying to do, trying to list my accomplishments.

And our goal was to once hearing that answer, hey, thanks for sharing that.

But guess what?

Like, you can do that over and over and over and over again, and you would never do it perfectly.

You can never completely live a life void of all sin.

You can't live a life that is so righteous, so righteous that God could look in heaven and say, actually, this guy is perfect.

So come on into heaven.

And that's true of all of us.

And so God had to have a different plan.

And his plan was, well, hard to believe because not everybody believes it.

But his plan was to put on flesh himself and dwell among us and die for us and take his sins upon himself.

And for the Father to put all the wrath that we all deserve for sin upon his own son instead, so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

Whoever believes in him will trade their own sin for his righteousness.

A totally unfair trade paid for by the blood of Jesus.

Jesus Christ's righteousness was given to Paul and it blew him away.

Like all of a sudden, his self-sufficiency, his religion, his perfection, his achievements, none of it mattered.

As he called it, it was worthless.

It was garbage to him.

And I just wonder how free he felt.

I wonder how much joy started flooding into his heart.

I know that I didn't live anywhere near like Paul did in my life, but I remember actually about three years into following Jesus, and it's so funny how we do this.

I put my faith in Christ at camp myself at the age of 15, at a little camp in southeastern Kentucky.

And I bet you could probably, if you knew me then, maybe even for the first six months to a year, and then met me maybe a year to two years after that, oh boy, I was like, let's be all holy.

You know, I'm gonna be all righteous.

I gotta, I gotta do this exactly perfectly right.

And not too many people would have caught on to this, but man, I was a self-righteous buddy.

I mean, I secretly were judging people who weren't dressing the right way for Jesus, acting the right way for Jesus, talking the right way for Jesus, making more sacrifices for Jesus, reading their Bible more emphatically for Jesus.

And man, I was secretly very, very judgmental.

And for a while, it felt kind of good.

I felt good, felt good about myself.

You know, I'm on fire for God.

I'm living differently.

I've changed the way I dress, I've changed the way I talk, I changed the way I act, I changed the way I live, I'm going to church all the time.

Then I went to college, my freshman year of college, and I met some happy, joyful, worshipful, unburdened believers, and I was like, something's wrong with them.

They're not taking this very seriously.

And I was seriously, that's how I was.

I was actually researching Bible verses to find some kind of biblical proof that they were not really following Jesus the right way.

They were just too joyful.

They were just too peaceful.

And I never will forget leading a devotion for a Christian club I was a part of.

And I was actually bragging on myself for feeling so guilty for a tiny thing I'd done wrong.

I'm like, man, that's when you know you love Jesus, when you feel super guilty about the weirdest little things.

And I remember we had a math professor that was our faculty, kind of our faculty sponsor for the club.

And she said, also, that could be the devil wanting to shackl you with guilt to make you feel less joy.

I was deeply offended by that.

And uh I really was.

I was like, out there, this is my devotion, you know?

And I went back to my dorm room and I said, I got researched.

Was she right about that?

And I actually pulled out uh a devotion book that I had that went through the book of Galatians.

It's such a short, easy read, the book of Galatians, and that changed my life.

It was like, in a way, a tiny, tiny, tiny version of what I hope and imagine that the Apostle Paul must have felt when the scales fell from his eye, when the weight was lifted from his heart.

Like there's absolutely nothing you can do to make his grace more amazing.

There's absolutely nothing you can do or not do to cause Jesus Christ to love you more than he does now.

Otherwise, it ain't the gospel.

There's absolutely nothing you can do to make yourself more forgiven by God than you are simply by faith in him.

He gives us his righteousness, he takes our sin, and that's it.

And that's the gospel truth.

And it changes you big time.

2 Corinthians 5.21 says, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

We are the righteousness of God.

That sounds crazy, doesn't it?

Especially if you're like me and you remember failing like only hours ago, in the and like, no, no, I'm not the righteousness of God.

But that's the gospel truth.

That's what his word says.

Paul no longer had to perform, he no longer had to be perfect, he no longer had to leave eternity in the air.

I I don't know what it was like for the Judaizers, for members of the Sanhedrin, for the Pharisaical leaders.

Like when you messed up, it's atonement.

And we we gotta have another sacrifice.

There was this cycle of trying your best and messing up and having atonement and doing it all the right way, and just hoping, just hoping that maybe, just maybe God was okay with how you were doing it.

And all of that goes away with Jesus Christ, all of it is gone.

I wonder if for Paul the prophecies clicked, and he began to think that's Jesus, that's Jesus.

I wonder if he remembered about the man who got questioned and interrogated by his own peers because he was born blind, but then he encountered a man named Jesus.

And he could see.

They're like, there's no way this really happened.

They even brought the man's parents in and interrogated the parents, like, give glory to God.

This isn't happened right.

He wasn't always blind, was he?

This is all a hoax.

But that guy's testimony, so simple.

That man said, I once was blind, but now I see.

I wonder if that resonated in Paul when those scales fell from his eyes three days after encountering Jesus himself.

So this is awesome.

Man, free from having to earn or deserve any of his grace.

That we become the righteousness of God because of what Jesus did, not because of what we do.

Awesome.

That's great.

Of course, I didn't go to practicality.

After all of that good news, then how do we live?

What does it look like to live in that grace?

Paul continues in Philippians 3 with verse 10.

He says, I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead.

I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead.

I don't mean to say that I've already achieved these things or that I've already reached perfection, but I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.

No, dear brothers and sisters, I've not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.

I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God through Christ Jesus is calling us.

You can just feel the zeal of Paul.

That same zeal that caused him to chase after Christians and have them arrested.

That same zeal got flipped by God and caused him to chase after the people who still did not know that Jesus had died for them.

To chase after new places, new people groups that still had not heard the gospel, people that may end up arresting him, may end up beating him for what he was saying.

He still took the risk and used that zeal to continue to pursue helping other people know who he is.

Now, I just told you that I hope that Paul felt this burden lifted of needing to be perfect in order to be accepted by God.

And yet we see the word perfection right here in this passage.

I want to reread to you part of verse 12.

I want to share with you just real quickly three awesome Greek words in just this half of a verse.

He said in verse 12, the last part, but I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.

That word press on, dioko means to run swiftly after, to follow, to pursue it, to chase after it.

I press on.

So he's running after something, running on to possess.

That's a really fun Greek word, ketalimbano.

Catalimbano.

It means to eagerly seize, to take hold of, to grab hold of forcefully.

So he's chasing after, to take hold of perfection, to lie, uh oh.

And actually, this is the root word of a word Jesus said from the cross, to telesti, which is translated, it is finished.

So what Paul is saying is, I'm when I see that word perfection, I cringe a little bit, like, no, I don't want to go back to trying to be perfect because it crushed me, it robbed me of joy and peace and understanding the grace of God.

But perfection means it's complete, it's finished.

And what Paul was chasing after was the finish, his completion, him becoming everything God died for him and redeemed him to become through Jesus Christ.

And the finish line of crossing that line, knowing that he did his best to bring as many people with him into the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That's what he was chasing after.

Here's how I would rephrase verse 12 I run hard to take hold of the finish for which Jesus first took hold of me.

And like I said, this means becoming more and more like him as I follow him.

This means bringing more people with me as I walk with him.

This means staying true and faithful to Jesus and the gospel all the way to the end of my life, no matter what might come my way, no matter what might try to push me off that path, and no matter what it will cost me personally.

Jesus doesn't make you better, he makes you completely new.

And that's I think something that needs to be proclaimed.

This isn't a way to layer in more self-help and inspiration in our lives.

For Paul to encounter Jesus meant completely turning away from everything he was doing with his life, encounting it as garbage and going forward.

For that man in the northeastern village of India who encountered Jesus Christ, what he had experienced was so immensely valuable, and he got it, that he was willing to lay down his own life to proclaim it, to hold on to it.

Something I don't think we fully grasp in the comfort of my home here in Northern Kentucky.

It doesn't make you better, it makes you completely transformed, completely new.

As Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3, he said, You must be born again.

This is eternal life.

You we can't later on Jesus onto who you are right now.

No, he makes you new, a completely new creation.

Just as Paul said other times in his letters, you are crucified, and resurrected.

So what about you?

Right here, right now, today, at this moment, in this moment, all that matters is that you leave behind your past and choose to follow Jesus, who has conquered your sin, death, hell, and the grave.

Today, that is literally all that matters.

You could have walked in here this morning and sat down, you could have clicked on Facebook or YouTube and joined us today, and you're listening right now, or you're watching right now, and what happened literally minutes before would cause you to think I am hopeless.

Or God has to be completely done with me because of what I've been up to, because of my past, because of my life.

And I'm telling you right now, where Paul was when he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus, he was literally the anti-Christian.

But then, in a moment, transformed by Jesus Christ, he was in missionary school right away.

And he became a force for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It does not matter where you've been, it doesn't matter what you've done, forgetting the past, as Paul said, and looking forward to what is had, press on.

Press on.

Take hold of that for which God has taken hold of you.

I've learned that it's always bad to try to go forward while looking backward.

I've learned it when my parents taught me gardening.

We had a big garden growing up in Harlan County.

And if you're trying to plow in a straight line or mow in a straight line, pretty much do anything in a straight line, you can't look back.

I have a really, really good running friend, Scott Trincamp, who lives here locally, and I know some of you know who he is.

He's a great ultra-marathon runner.

So experienced.

He's done it for years.

I love talking to him and hearing his stories.

Back last year, back in the fall, I think it was in October, he had a terrible fall on one of our Wednesday night runs that we do, and it injured him really bad.

He had a tore of a bunch of ligaments in his shoulder.

He was really messed up.

And we're like, this is an experienced guy.

What happened?

He said, I turned around for one second just to see if that car was gonna get close, just for a second, and boom, I was down.

I was completely dazed, didn't know what happened.

He's doing better now.

He's actually pacing people for a big old marathon this weekend.

Nothing's gonna stop him from keeping on going.

But it just reminds me that just looking back while trying to go forward, it just doesn't work.

God doesn't want you to do it.

If he forgives you, you're forgiven.

If he saves you, you are all the way saved.

If he gives you grace, he doesn't give you a dose of it.

He gives you all of it.

And it is amazing.

And that's why we can say goodbye yesterday.

I'm even living in the light of a new day.

I won't waste another minute in my old ways.

Praise the Lord, I've been born again.

I hope that you can truly say that today.

I hope that you can truly sing that today when we sing it in just a moment.

But if you can't, I got good news.

Romans 10, 13 says, For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

So before we sing this song, we're gonna pray.

And if you've never called upon his name and asked him to save you, asked him to give you his righteousness and give that in place of your sin, you ask him right here, right now, and it is done forever and ever.

So let's pray right now.

Let's bow together.

Father, we come before you.

And today, there might be someone who has never called upon your name, never asked you to forgive them, never asked you to save them.

And Lord, in this very moment, they're calling upon your name, saying, Okay, I want to leave my past behind today.

Oh Lord, I believe that you died on the cross for our sins.

And so I ask you to forgive me and save me even now.

Lord, whoever might be praying a prayer like that, help them to know that today is the first day of the rest of their new life, the rest of their abundant life, the rest of their eternal life.

Oh God, how awesome is that! And because of that, we can sing, we can dance on the grave that we once stood in, once lived in, and we can keep pressing on forward, living in the grace and the knowledge and the love and the peace and the joy that comes from knowing that you have saved us, that you've redeemed us, that we are yours now and forever.

Father, thank you and praise you for that now.

We pray in the powerful name of your Son Jesus Christ.

And all God's people said, Amen, amen.